Very few videogames actually have an “I Win” button. Granted, every game that pits player against player will have an array of finishing moves, and every once in a while one of them will make it to launch in a woefully overpowered state. If the game is patchable, you know this ability will be nerfed to the ground soon enough (especially if it benefits mages), or if it’s Starcraft, everyone will just choose the Zerg, forever.

But most of them time, what seems like a quick “I Win” was actually the result of the right ingredients, intense preparation and timing. Often (especially when I’m playing), any “I Win” scenarios are pure luck, and could never be repeated. Luckily for us all, that doesn’t apply when the game is cooking, and I take notes.

“I Win” Button Harvest Chili

(makes 6 quarts)

The “I Win” button, here, is the second time you turn on the crockpot (yes, I said second). Sure, it will take another 5-8 hours until you can savour your victory – but once you dip your spoon in you’ll know it was worth the wait.

I should note that I have a 6 quart crockpot, and this recipe filled it. If you have a smaller crockpot, you should buy a larger one. But in the meantime, maybe halve the recipe?

I had tickets to Autumn Brew Review last year. It sounded like fun and I had looked forward to it, but then there was a LAN party (in a frikking hangar!) and nerding out with friends won out over drinking with strangers, that year.

This year, things got planned a little better. I invited more friends, and got my nerding quotient for the weekend filled on Friday night. So, early on Saturday afternoon (after realizing that I am apparently the only person living north of the 610 who possesses a working alarm clock, I headed out to the show).

Autumn Brew Review is a craft beer festival/tasting event that for the past couple or three years has been held on the grounds of the Historic Grain Belt Brewery in NE Minneapolis. Unlike Winterfest, which is an all-local event, ABR features brewers from across the US – chillin’ under a tent on a warm late summer afternoon, serving up their best to the appreciative throngs.

Now, I didn’t make it to anywhere near all 60 breweries — and likely would have died if I had tried for 200+ different samples, here are some of the standouts:

Barley John’s – Rosie’s Old Ale – Old Ales/Barleywines are one of my go-to styles of beer. Malty, high-gravity, over-the-top beers that should almost be something else. I intend to drink many of them, so as to weather the MN winter. If Rosie’s wasn’t $75/growler, I probably would add it to my rotation. It’s a really good balance between the sweet (that can by overpowering in more naive beers of this style), and a nice hop bitterness (with a touch of citrus aroma).

Founder’s Brewing Company – Breakfast Stout – I like coffee, I like beer, I generally dislike it when they are put together (which a lot of brewers do, as the flavour profiles should be complimentary, but in fact when combined they make fail). But this beer managed to make it work — the coffee tasted like coffee (and not the sweepings from a Dunn Bros floor), and the chocolate malt really sang through.

Furthermore Beer – Thermo Refur – Brewed from beets of all things. With a description that includes words like “grammy’s purse”, and “horse barn”. I expected to hate it, but it was actually pretty good. Complex, not something I’d drink everyday, and I’d want to be careful about what I paired it with… but good.

Horny Goat Brewing Company – Hopped Up ‘N Horny – because this list needs a session beer (I’m realizing that everything else on here is upwards of 8% ABV… oops). Your standard American Pale Ale. Hops rule on this one, but not so much as a Furious, or Summit Extra Pale. Something to drink on a summer afternoon.

Southern Tier Brewing Company – Creme Brulee Stout – My (increasingly incoherent over the course of the afternoon) tasting notes include the phase “Amber likey”. I’m usually not a fan of “gimmick” beers like this (and the coffee beers, discussed above), but this works. Really well. The provided notes don’t explain how exactly they managed to capture everything that is good about creme brulee in a beer without it being too sweet/too burnt/fake syrupy tasting, but there it is. This isn’t a beer to serve with dessert. This is a beer to serve instead of dessert.

I could go on… there were lots of others that I liked (and lots that were just boring, and some that were just awful) — I think, now, I’ll devote some energy to finding out where I can even buy all these beers, locally… Alvey?

Notes for next year:

The Early Access Tickets were worth every penny. It may be only an extra hour, but actually being able to hit Surly and Lift Bridge and the other really popular tables before the proles arrived. To be honest, as much as I like Surly’s beers, no brewery is worth waiting 20+ minutes in line for a 2oz sample of (though, I did like the 2009 Darkness much more than the 2008 version last year).

Preztel Necklaces – I’m surprised none of the food vendors were selling these. While I ate a decent breakfast, and knew that we would likely be doing an early supper someone in NE, I was definitely coveting something salty about 20 samples in. While the food available (burgers, pizza, etc) looked good, I didn’t want anything so heavy, really.

Pedal Pub – I’m happy that the pedal pub seminars worked based on a sign-up list, as opposed to having to wait in line all afternoon to take a ride. We were able to sign up relatively early for the seminar that we wanted (Tyranena Brewery + Legacy Chocolates discussed pairing the best things in the universe), and then do the tasting thing and take a break in the shade for a while when before we loaded up.

Take Notes – however illegible, the notes that I took in the program are the only thing that I have to help me remember all of the different beers I had. Even when they are simple like a plus sign, or a DO NOT WANT, I can use them, combined with the notes from the brewers as a reference on my next shopping trip.

Plan Ahead – Some of the breweries posted their line-ups on MN Beer ahead of time. I wish I had read them (or new someone who could get me an advance PDF of the program). I would have loved to have a more detailed plan of attack for what I wanted to try during that first, precious hour, or to have a checklist of things that I wanted to get to (despite the crowds) before I called it a day.

All in all, it was a great time. Thanks Amber, Jen, and Picasso for coming with. See you at Winterfest?

Right around this time last year, there was much internet wailing and nashing of teeth because some author who I’d never heard about killed himself.

Normally, I wouldn’t have cared much, but some of the wailing and nashing was being performed by friends of mine whose opinions of on things literary I’ve come to respect, so I allowed myself to believe that maybe there was something to this David Foster Wallace guy, but since I’m not the type to read books that are considered “literature”, I’d probably never really know what the big deal was. I mean, his most famous work is a ridiculous 1000+ page (plus endnotes!) opus, that mocks the reader with it’s title and has defeated more attempts to read it than Pynchon and his god-damned rainbow1.

Fast forward to this spring — the letters DFW are showing up on my RSS feeds again. The plan is to read the opus over the course of astronomical summer. There is a schedule. There are forums. There’s even a Ravelry group. The book, which is an unreasonable 9×6x2 inches in paperback2 is available for a reasonable price (under $10) on Kindle. I like to read things in the summer, there’s peer pressure. So I dip my toes into the Infinite Summer waters.

And I like it. A lot. I can’t speak to it’s literary worth, but I can say that at 89% through it’s been both challenging and fulfilling. Funny and profane and sad and profound. And lots of other good words too.

So anyways, my favourite character (Michael Pemulis, for anyone who is reading, but doesn’t know me well enough to see why this would obviously be true) in a recent footnote dons a t-shirt that supposedly says (in russian): “Vodka is the Enemy of Production”. With a menacing looking glyph of a bottle.

I feel a deep need to own such a shirt.

Which leads me to Google. Which leads me to this gallery of soviet anti-alcohol propaganda posters. Which leads to me to determine that the decor of my basement bar (when it ever comes to fruition) needs to feature these posters heavily-to-exclusively. Because they are amazing — even when you don’t know what they mean.

Still no luck on the shirt, though.

1No… I’m not bitter about my inability to finish Gravity’s Rainbow… not at all.

2Seriously, there’s no way I would have read this book if I had to carry it everywhere.

Jenni’s post does a better job of summing up this past Labour Day’s camping weekend that I possibly could. There was looking, and card playing, and conversation on topics from the inane to the inappropriate. Somewhere in between the subject of hick-hop came up. I still don’t know what it is, really, and I wondered aloud if it was related to Nerdcore.

Which reminded me, that I’d recently acquired a new MC Frontalot album, but not worked it into my rotation yet.

In unrelated news, as some of you may be aware, my boyfriend is a Nerd (both capital, and lowercase n). And he’s currently in a place where bandwidth doesn’t really support the playing of more shall we say “graphically-blessed” games. So he’s reverted in game technology about 15 years or so and is rocking the MUDs.

So, back to MC Front. I finally give Final Boss a listen, and found my new favourite song pretty early on…

The song calls out Zork, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, -and- Leather Goddesses of Phobos1. In the video, he duels with Steve Meretzky! This thing could singlehandedly resurrect Infocom. How could a girl who grew up with an IBM PCjr not love it?

The gmail outtage is making me twitchy (it’s amazing and sad how much this article explains about me, and everyone else I guess), so I figured it’s time to post.

Since we last spoke:

the gloves of pain took 2nd place in their category — I’m going to go check out what won first place tomorrow.

the ash tree in my backyard decided to do this:

which, really, is unacceptable. So $600 later, my backyard is minus one tree, but plus a giant pile of logs and a big old stump. I celebrated this with an impromptu bonfire and Picasso, Chele, Marshall & I had a good time chatting, drinking tequila, and working on cutting down on the size of my wood pile. [Insert Settlers of Catan joke related to trading for wood here].

Looking ahead:

Camping with the usual suspects over Labour Day is officially a tradition now or something. It obviously won’t be the same without Nerds 2 and 3 turning our camp fire into a foundry, but I might whittle something in their honour.

Willis reminding me that Surlyfest tickets just went on sale also reminded me that the Autumn Brew Review is coming up September 12th, and forward-looking me bought tickets before they sold out within minutes. Pedal Pub! And over 200 beers to sample. I’ve completely lost all desire to brew lately — hopefully this will snap me out of that.

I’ve started in earnest to plan for what Nerd 2 and I will do on our Autumn Vacation. It’s funny how frustrating it is to buy plane tickets when your criteria are: get the best possible price, for a round-trip flight to “Europe”, leaving sometime the 2nd week of November, returning before Thanksgiving. I’ve eliminated the idea of flying into London though, which is making things look cheaper and less complicated.

Speaking of Thanksgiving! There may perhaps be plans afoot, so if you’re in the area, keep October 11th free.